SeattleRingHunter 206-618-8194  Lost Item Recovery Specialist LAND & SCUBA

Watch this episode of the SeattleRingHunter “$10k Gold Cuban Chain Drop SeaFair Lake Washington »

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Little did I know I was about to embark on one of the most enduring dive search challenges to date.

My first priority in all of these water searches is to establish the drop zone either by a natural or structural marker in the water way or by a GPS PIN.

It is important to note our Seattle SeaFair event consisting of hydroplane races and typically a Blue Angel air show is a much anticipated long running annual event for many years. For only four days during the event the temporary log booms are setup as boat anchor stations on the same mooring lines every year. After the event a barge comes through and removes all evidence of the log booms.

When Chris’s firs desperate call came in I had to explain to him due to my dive safety there was no way I could dive on this during the event. Knowing that the log boom station was several hundred feet from shore in open water it was an absolute priority that we had to capture an accurate GPS PIN over the drop zone if he were to ever see his dropped Gold cuban chain ever again. Fortunately Chris was still on the same boat and he did his best with my instruction to capture a GPS PIN.

Come that Monday afternoon after the event was over I meet with Chris and as we stood on the sore staring out to a massive clear open water lake. No log boom, he was shaking his head in disbelief that his phone’s GPS PIN was not positioned straight out where he remember the boat was anchored.  When he shared this concern I felt a huge black cloud of disappointment for Chris as without an accurate GPS I would  not even be able to make one dive and expect to come any where close to his dropped $10k GOLD cuban chain!

After a moment of silence Chris told me that there was a guy on the same boat the really didn’t want to make eye contact that took a photo about fifteen minutes after the drop. He asked the man if he could text the photos so he could try to find his chain. Upon hearing this news I immediately ask if he had inspected the photos for a GPS pin and he was unsure. I simply told him in a stern manner jut text them to me so I can inspect them. This was our only hope and just a few seconds later I flicked up the photos and found the golden GPS location we desperately needed. After popping them in to Google maps and seeing them positioned five hundred feet straight out from shore I knew I had enough to dive on this search!

Little did I know that was just the beginning of a long labor intensive project. In reality my first dive was more of a let’s get acquainted with this dive site kind of dive.

Having done this kind of recovery dive work for a very long time I knew in my mind that his gold Cuban chain would be under the silt layer and not a visual find unless it landed on a hard structure above the silt. During my first dive it became immediately apparent that the conditions at the lake bottom were good for this search in that the silt was only a few inches deep with a hard bottom. 

Due to the distance, depth and silt conditions no average diver would just dive down and visually snag his chains so I knew his chain was for the most part protected from the shark treasure hunters and would not be moving anywhere until I got my hands on it! This was a big encouragement for me now to get to work to see how long this project would take.

The lake floor in this area was also relatively flat at 60 feet deep. These were positive points for a dive search. Within recreational dive limits 60 feet for 60 minutes to stay within my No Decompression Limit. For these searches sixty minutes goes by fast! On my first dive I was quickly over taken by the massive amount of trash laying about like an airplane crash debris field. Every thing from beer cans, beer bottles, wine bottles, sun glasses, plastic Mardi Gras beads, BBQ grills, lighters, vapes, and essentially anything that can fall off a boat littered the lake floor.  This all translates to a lot of metal trash and a lot of work removing, collecting and scanning the area with my metal detector for the lost Gold Cuban Chain. 

Seeing all the trash was encouraging that I was under the log boom drop zone however there is still quite a bit of uncertainty if I am precisely over the gold cuban chain drop location.

Well on my second dive ten days after the drop I dove down and got a signal in the silt. I plunged my hand into the silt and pulled out an Apple Watch and low and behold it was still in low power mode with the clock still displayed telling me this was a fresh drop. I was so excited and only hoped there was no pass code so I could find the owner to return his watch, mostly to gain additional information of when and how he lost it.

After returning home that evening I quickly placed the watch on a charger knowing the Apple watches are good past 100 feet and it had only been at 60 so it was not damaged, still working as intended. After the watch was charged I was blessed to find there was no passcode. I quickly found the owner had turned off the cellular as they most likely never expected to see it ever again and opted for a replacement. I obtained the owners mother’s phone number and his email address. I sent a you won’t believe this message guess what I found and went to bed. The next morning my pone was ringing and we had a very happy conversation. Caught up in the fact he never expected to get his watch back I asked him what day did you loose your watch Friday, Saturday or Sunday? He said it was on Friday. I got very excited as I knew that to be the day Chris lost his gold cuban chain. I then asked the young man do you recall if anyone else lost anything that day? He responded with a bit of energy that some dude lost a $10k GOLD CUBAN CHAIN on the same day. I said yes excellent that is why I was diving there to find the chain. I asked a final followup question was the boat he jumped off of to the North or South of your boat. He said that guy jumped from the same boat I lost my Apple watch from! 

At this point I had been given a huge gift. The gift being this absolute assurance that the GPS PIN we had was absolutely spot on over the drop zone. Now I could invest as much time as necessary chasing after Chris’s lost Gold Cuban necklace chain. I know my process was good enough to get the job done yet though this whole process after several dives and no finds I began to review my equipment and processes looking for ways to make improvements. Improvements is exactly what I did an many of them, I modified a pin pointer metal detector to function at depth, created a down rigger retrieval system for my anchor system to save energy, invested in additional dive gear for safety, developed a simple clip system on my search line to say absolutely on my search grid, developed a massive improvement to the way I was transporting my cellphone during my surface swim in what I believe made one of the biggest improvements to this project. 

The dry bag cellphone slate holder keeps my phone vertical upright above the water at all times for a solid cellular / GPS reception through the complete swim out to the point of deploying my anchor shot line for maximized precision. The cell pone slate was not used until the last two dives on this project. I am extremely please with its performance and expect to have many future successes based on what I have learned from this project moving forward.

Watch this story and see the exciting recovery in action.

 

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Professional lost item recovery of items of value, jewelry, rings, necklace, charms, earrings, watches, keepsakes, wallets, cell phones, hearing aids, car keys and more.

Metal detection, experienced SCUBA recovery diver for hire, lost in house, lost in car, lost on land, dropped in the lake, lost in the snow, and items thrown in anger.

Serving the Pacific North West WA state, Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Bellevue, Everett, Redmond, Auburn, Renton, Sumner, Tukwila, Federal Way, Fife, Milton, Puyallup, Bony Lake, Graham, Parkland, White Center, Mercer island, Tulalip, Crystal Mountain, Summit at Snoqualmie, Newcastle, Edmonds, Bothell, Enumclaw, Montlake Terrace, Mukiteo, Kingston, West Seattle, Alki, Lake Washington, Lake Sammamish, Issiquah, Lake Union, Arlington, North Gate, Green Lake Park, Gas Works Park Seattle, Wallingford, Golden Gardens Park, Carkeek Park, Denny Park, Juanita Beach Park, Kenmore, Whidbey Island, Bainbridge Island, Port Orchard, Kirkland, Duvall, Snoqualmie, Preston, North Bend, Puget Sound and many more…

I lost my ring how do I find it with a metal detector in the yard, snow, lake and sand. I need an experienced recovery SCUBA diver near me to find my lost wedding ring, cell phone, wallet and car keys.

May 11, 2025